Vintage Lunchboxes from the 50s to the 2000s - this is an incredible collection and you'll instantly start thinking about your school days!

What was your favorite lunchbox?

I asked mom recently what lunchbox I had because I couldn't remember. She couldn't either. But I know I was hooked on Space:1999 and Speed Racer, and Scooby-Doo - so it's likely I had one of those. These are all very cool and a few years back I was still able to pick up some great ones in the online auctions of shopgoodwill.com #imjustsayin ...

They just don’t make lunchboxes like they used to — and it’s a shame because the vintage ones (and their accompanying thermoses, too) are brilliant reminders of popular culture during the era from which they came. Look into the vault (read: Google) and find a lunchbox, presumably from the 1950s, showing James Arness, gun drawn and atop a horse, from Gunsmoke. The 1960s are represented by The Munsters, The Beatles and Planet of the Apes; the 70s have The Dukes of Hazard and Welcome Back, Kotter; the 80s Pac-Man and Return of the Jedi; the 90s Dumb and Dumber; and the 2000s Wall-E and Kill Bill. And those were just some of the ones I was able to find cataloged in various places online.

Nowadays people of a certain age (mostly those who pack a lunch and watch Disney Channel) revere ogle over famous faces like Justin Bieber, The Jonas Brothers and either Edward or Jacob, but certainly not both. While those lads have vaguely earned having lunchboxes plastered with their smiling mugs (and have they do, except Bieber, who will imminently), they just don’t stack up against, say, one showing an intricate fight scene from the original Transformers.

There’s also something about the tin or metal most of the old-school ones were constructed from, which has been fazed out in many current iterations, in favor of the possibly cheaper (and absolutely cheaper-looking) lunchboxes that feel like canvas. What with their puffy plastic decals, insulation (you know, to keep the juice-boxes cold) and zippers. Zippers!

To be fair, they still render some members of contemporary popular culture in these tin trophies, but they just don’t feel the same. The new ones lack the imagery, detail and imagination of their predecessors. Maybe the antiques seem better because a little rust goes a long way; these containers meant to carry food have endured time and use to become charming mementos more suited now for museums than cafeterias.